Assessment Using an Observation Procedure in the Cognitively Oriented Curriculum.

Love, John M.

In the High/Scope Cognitively Oriented Curriculum, teachers create an environment in which students develop and apply cognitive capacities in the areas of classification, seriation, spatial and temporal relations and in the process of representation to the widest ranges of materials and subjects. Learning takes place through the child's manipulation and experimentation with objects and through his experiences with the cognitive goal areas incorporated into his activities by the teacher. The observation procedure used is SCOPE (Systematic Classroom Observation of Pupil Experience) and consists of six broad categories: (1) child-adult contacts, (2) child-child contacts, (3) child-material contacts involving reading or writing, (4) child-material contacts not involving reading or writing, (5) lone, and (6) group size. A separate instrument for coding teacher behavior, SCOTE, was also created. Since classroom behaviors are directly relevant to curriculum goals, observational data can be used for assessing success in meeting those goals. The intensive data on individual children may serve a useful formative function since a profile of the interaction patterns of the children can be provided to the teacher. (Author/RC)